FRENCH FANCY
From high-end conceptual art to zines and £1 doodles, GYM CLASS MAGAZINE chats with London-based French artist David Lasnier
You’re a French artist living in London. Where in France are you from and when/why did you move to London?
I’d been living in Marseille for seven years. It’s a fantastic place for low metabolism living: very cheap, a lot of artists and friends. I decided to leave it because I wanted to have a serious work session far from friends, from the world as I know it and as it knows me. I wanted to challenge my practice, kick my own ass.
Your website mentions you’re working on two pieces to be exhibited in Paris and Taiwan later this year. What can you tell GYM CLASS MAGAZINE readers about the pieces?
I will be showing two conceptual pieces. I know how the word conceptual is discussed here, and I mean it. I’m very attached to the word and the history of conceptual art because it fits my idea that as an artist I want to make complicated things, because it’s more interesting to think than not. But you also want everybody to be invited to the party, so you set the complexity on the logic and common sense rather than on specific culture that will distinguish elite society.
The first piece: trace a circle on the ground, make its radius grow and grow and grow again. At one point it will be as wide as the equator, but if the radius grows again, it will fade to a reasonable size. This is what I will be showing, a circle on the ground, its centre on the other side of the earth. The title is TEMPORARY BORDER OF THE ANTIPODE’S EXPANSIONIST REPUBLIC.
The second piece is an object that, with its specially chosen alloys, adjustable tripod with micrometrical screws, its three axis and bell jar, is capable of situating a point in space, remarkable because it’s vertically aligned with the centre of the Earth. So, when you find such a point, you can use the object to mark it. I’ve teamed up with a young American called Jim Sellers who is brilliant at making metal parts. The collaboration is a pure delight.
So there will be two different kinds of formal proposals. One very easy to make, anyone can trace a circle on the ground. And something that is more like a masterpiece. The purpose is to test how ideas inject themselves into objects.
We chatted with you at the 2009 Publish and Be Damned fair for Michael Bojkowski’s ace website LINEFEED. At the Fair we purchased one of your stamps… it stamps the word ‘stamped’. Cool!
More recently, we purchased the first three issues of your one-page architecture zine. Looking forward to the postman dropping them through the mailbox. Like the stamp, there’s a simple idea behind the zine. What’s it all about?
There is a simple idea in the way of naming it, it’s called *INE which approximately and recursively stands for *ine Is No zinE, different issues different names: AINE (stands for Aine Is No zinE), BINE, etc.
Before coming to London, I wanted to publish a small form. Once in London, it became obvious that it would be about architecture, because it’s so exciting here. What I like in London, is how the most ancient area of it is also the place for the boldest architectural attempts.
When you want to park your car, sometimes, a car is in the middle, alone and very badly parked, so you assume this person didn’t make any effort to park. But perhaps, when parking this car they had to fit between two very badly parked cars, and so on. This information “badly parked car” could have been transmitted with no master-plan for years, maybe the first badly parked car, has been parked ten years ago! For me the City of London is the same, there are streets that only keep the information “shape of the street” no building on it was there when the street was first and nobody ever decided the shape of the street. The City is the oldest area of London, but there are not many remains, and so much triumphant architecture all around. I decided to track small bits of old and quirky architectures with small histories behind them.
When I was living in Walthamstow, where some friends hosted me for a while, I noticed a weird grave, which can be connected with the history of St Mary Axe. Then I discovered the great London Stone which London wealth relies on and nobody knows about. The third issue is about Primrose Street where post-modern architecture does the best it can. I’m working on the next issues, I have some great stories about the Truman Brewery Chimney, the Tower Tunnel…
You kindly drew the original portrait of model Tony Ward [above] for this issue of GYM CLASS MAGAZINE. Thank you! Via your website, you’re available for commissions… at set rates ranging from a £1 doodle up to a £100 illustration. What’s the most expensive commission you’ve so far received and what did you draw?
For this one, I must admit I did my best! At the moment, the most expensive was £10, a friend asked me to draw a wolf for his son. I drew a wolf with a wolf t-shirt. Some people have asked for a series of 10 or 20 £1 doodles, which is very interesting, it’s a way to hijack my proposal and be sure to hire me for complete night of doodling.
How much would the beard drawing cost if commissioned via your website?
We will never know, I can’t help but doing my best each time. Let’s say that it’s definitely a drawing and not a doodle, so between £10 and £100.
Do you also work commercially, for magazines?
No, I’ve never done that but I’d love to! I come from the fine art world, but I have a deep admiration for illustrators and graphic designers, I’m a greedy consumer of daily graphic porn.
Last year I started working with ULS, which is a small-press based in Marseille. We did the stamp you saw at Publish and be Damned, an artist's book, a box with drawings and are now starting a zine collection, I’ve just finished a proposal for that. They are really passionate collectors and publishers, and they have a very interesting approach with cheap or free collectable objects by major artists like Peter Downsbrough, Daniel Buren and Claude Closky.
The zine and the commissioned drawings are the first commercial experiences I’ve done on my own. I’ve been working for ten years, mostly with video and online projects, so the question of value wasn’t central. Better, it was possible to avoid it. As I think the commercial aspect is very important in art, and should be critically embraced, I decided to initiate such experiments. In the zine I dissociate the value and access to the information, as half the prints are spread for free and a PDF is available on my website. For the commissioned drawings I jumped straight in the least independent situation for an artist: being given a topic and a budget.
— Interview given to Gym Class Magazine #5, spring 2010